


A Discrete Arrangement

by Scruggzi



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Discussion of Abortion, Domestic Violence, F/M, Five times Jack refers someone to Mac for an abortion and the one time he didn't have to, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Jack Robinson drinks his respect women juice, No phracking babies, The person is not underage for Australia, Underage refers to AO3 tagging rules which is under 18, Very much not rated for smut, illegal abortion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25131781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scruggzi/pseuds/Scruggzi
Summary: Unable to change the laws that force women to seek out backstreet abortionists, Jack and Mac develop an understanding.OrFive times Jack sends someone to Mac for an abortion and the one time he doesn't have to.
Relationships: Elizabeth MacMillan & Jack Robinson, Jack Robinson & Jane Ross, Phryne Fisher & Elizabeth MacMillan, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 154





	A Discrete Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks muchly to Moreofawaltz for betaing and a big shout out to Arlome whose brilliant chapter Choice in her Miss Fisher Made Me Do It collection inspired this work.
> 
> This is not a happy fic so read the tags and proceed with caution.
> 
> The underage tag caused me a bit of confusion - it's important to the story that the 16-year-old is not underage. The age of consent in Victoria was and is 16 but AO3 goes by US rules. Just a head's up.

The first time was awkward, as these things often are. They didn’t know each other well at that point and Jack wasn’t entirely sure of himself. It was a big risk to take for both of them. But the woman sat across his desk, her face grey and bloodless as she recounted her assault was clearly in need of help, and not the sort that he could provide.

The best he could do was drop the indecency charges; the bastard who raped her would almost certainly go free. They couldn’t hold him on the word of a prostitute, not with the calibre of lawyer the man could afford. Her profession made it very unlikely that the case would get to trial, let alone result in anything approaching justice. Her assailant would call her a liar and a whore, point to his own reputation as a gentleman, and that would be the end of it. It was a story he’d seen play out too many damn times and it never got easier to live with himself afterwards.

Of course, he was the servant of the law, not its master. There were lines he couldn’t cross, but every good policeman knew there were times when a little strategic ignorance could do more good than following the letter of the law. The word of a murderer was not much to go on, but Dr MacMillan had been accused of assisting a young woman in trouble during the nasty incident at the Gaskin factory. He’d looked the other way at the time, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there was truth to the rumour and this young woman was in enough trouble already.

Jack poured her a tot of whiskey, which she downed in one, and mentioned a doctor he knew at the Women’s Hospital who she might wish to consult about her injuries. He could not be certain of how much trouble she was in, but he had his suspicions. The tentative suggestion should at least keep her off a back-street butcher’s slab, or from resorting to desperate measures of her own if she was indeed carrying her attacker’s baby.

It was a step up from nothing, and he couldn’t say he regretted it for a moment.

* * *

The second time he had a little less in the way of plausible deniability, but he had come to the conclusion that some risks were worth taking.

She was barely sixteen, little more than a child herself, foolish and terrified. His men had picked her up in a raid on one of the more disreputable dance halls. She had begged him not to contact her parents, weeping uncontrollably on the little bench in the bullpen, bootleggers and petty thieves on either side.

He took her into his office and offered her a cup of tea and a biscuit from his secret stash. She accepted with shaking hands, told him about her ‘boyfriend’ who had invited her to the club and given her the password to get in. The Inspector knew the man. A foul creature who had never quite been caught on the wrong side of the law; although his proclivity for young girls had almost certainly pushed him over it. He was high up on a mental list of people that the Inspector had, more than once, considered passing to Miss Fisher for a little summary justice. Not a good idea. It was bad enough he couldn’t keep her off his crime scenes without encouraging her to become a vigilante as well.

Still, it was a tempting thought.

The child confessed her sins through tea and tears, her unspoken fears clear in every stuttered breath. She blamed herself, of course. They always did. He scrawled Dr MacMillan’s name on a scrap of paper, gave her a clean handkerchief and advised her to stay out of trouble.

He felt like an accessory to a crime. Which, perhaps, he was. But as Miss Fisher had so succinctly pointed out after the incident at the Green Mill, sometimes, the law was an ass.

* * *

There were others…

Like the woman who’d been pushed down the stairs when her husband had come home to the news that there would be another mouth to feed. He’d likely do it again, if it hadn’t solved the problem the first time. She declined to press charges. Couldn’t put enough food on the table by herself, she said. The bruise under her eye hadn’t fully healed, the hints of green and purple still clearly visible under the thick layer of make-up.

She’d have grounds for a divorce if she could afford it and was willing to bear the scandal, but he’d seen this all too often before, and, in most cases, it wasn’t really an option. Cruelty was on the statute book, but the courts did nothing to put food in children’s mouths, unless Welfare got involved and that was a whole other world of pain and mostly did more harm than good.

Women would petition the courts for clemency after he’d dragged their husband away to sleep off the drink and bloody knuckles in the cells, fear and shame and desperation all conspiring against justice. Even those willing to press charges feared the penury that would follow for their families if they lost the brute's income to a jail sentence. They all swore they would do a better job of managing the man’s anger when he came home. It never worked. There was a quiet death, a helplessness behind the eyes that you learned to recognise after a few years on the job. It sickened him that the sight had become so familiar.

And so, Jack made the call to the hospital from the station telephone and asked the good doctor if she could check a woman over for internal injuries following a fall down the stairs. She readily agreed and asked no further questions.

He thought of Miss Fisher, shaking in the face of Rene Du Bois and wondered if she had been rendered so small by the weight of his fist, or worse. Had there had been someone who had helped her to escape him? Surely even Phryne Fisher couldn’t do everything alone.

The thought of her gave him hope that there might be more to this woman’s future than dead eyes and split lips - that with a little help, she might not only escape, but triumph. It was possible, if depressingly unlikely, and at least this time he felt he truly had done all he could.

The next time he spoke to Dr MacMillan, she suggested he pass on her details to women with similar injuries who might feel more comfortable talking to a lady doctor, and from then on, he kept a stack of her cards in his desk.

* * *

Mrs Huddleston was the first one he knew personally. Not a victim of crime or a suspect met over the interrogation table. She came in once a week to do the dusting and give the place a bit of a spruce. His work took up so much of his time he considered it more than worth the expense and she was a kindly soul. Her encyclopaedic knowledge of garden vegetables and the best way to grow them in Melbourne’s unpredictable climate was always welcome, as were her occasional contributions to his secret biscuit stash.

From time to time she would bring one or two of her children along – the younger ones with no-one to mind them – when the older were in school or out to work. He was somewhat less keen on their company; they were loud and boisterous and tended to ask the same questions or tell the same uninteresting stories over and over again.

It wasn’t so bad when they were outside and all he could hear was the bubbling of their laughter as they romped around in the garden. There was a time when he had hoped very much to fill his house with that sound. He wondered where that desire had gone; he had changed so much since the day he’d carried Rosie giggling over the threshold, he could barely recognise the young man he had been back then. He still had hopes, though. Dreams, too. More than he could have imagined a year ago - before a certain Honourable Miss had barrelled headlong into his life and turned it upside down.

Then there was the day his normally scrupulously punctual housekeeper failed to arrive. She sent a message with one of the older children – Hattie, Jack thought her name was – the youngest, Tommy, had come down with the measles and she had to stay home to care for him. He gave the girl a penny for the message.

“Thanks, Mister. I best get back. Ma’s got a new bub on the way and she gets tired easy right now.”

He dug one of Dr MacMillan’s cards out of his billfold and passed it to her, telling her to reassure her mother that he would cover the cost of her brother’s care and could manage for himself until the lad was better.

The next time Mrs Huddleston arrived it was with an enormous batch of biscuits. She pronounced Dr Mac an ‘angel sent from Heaven’ for all she’d done for her little boy, who was well enough to be left in the care of his older sister so his mother could return to work.

The ‘new bub’ made no appearance and was never mentioned again.

* * *

And then there was Jane…

Phryne was off in Sydney, some case she had described with the portentous words ‘the less you know, the better, darling’. He’d raised his eyebrows at her until she’d agreed to telephone him if she needed his help. She would too. They had been together long enough for him to trust her in that.

It was strange to be at Wardlow whilst she was away; the house seemed larger somehow without her in it, emptier. Not that he was alone. Mr Butler still pottered about in the kitchen; Hugh popped in as often as he could find an excuse to – covertly seeking Jack’s reassurances about the safety of his wife with his usual, impressive lack of tact and subtly.

Jane was home from university, too, an unplanned visit that was nevertheless welcome. He tried not to take her obvious disappointment at Phryne’s absence too personally; he had gotten along very well with Jane in the years since his permanent move to Wardlow and was rather glad of the company. They shared a love of science and literature, and each had found in the other a little something that had been missing from their lives.

She was as infuriating and headstrong as her guardian at times, and just as wedded to her independence. She was not an especially good liar, though, and Jack didn’t need to be a detective to realise there was something on her mind. He found her sobbing in the parlour the day after her arrival, sitting on the window seat, her feet pulled up underneath her, just the way Phryne did when she sat there.

“Oh, Jack I’ve been so stupid…” He held her close, his precious girl, as near to a child of his own as he could ever want or need and let her break her heart against his shoulder.

“He said he’d marry me, but I don’t want it. I don’t want to…”

That was something Jack supposed, at least the lad had been prepared to take responsibility for the situation. It was a mitigating factor which somewhat reduced his desire to hunt the young man down and break his nose for leaving Jane in such a state.

“We were so careful. I did everything Miss Phryne told me.”

She probably had been careful; Jane had a good head on her shoulders, but sometimes careful just wasn’t enough. Accidents could happen to anyone. As could mistakes, especially at eighteen, when everything was new, passions were high and the whole world was at your feet. He sat quietly with his arms around her, doing his best to let her know without words that she was safe, and had no need to fear his censure or his judgement. When her tears finally subsided he got up and poured a whisky into the glass Phryne usually drank from.

“Would you like me to telephone Doctor MacMillan?”

She nodded, gratefully, accepting the glass with red rimmed eyes that watched him as he made his way into the hall.

They did not speak of it again, but Phryne, on her return, held him very close as they lay in bed and squeezed his hand in gratitude. Her voice cracked a little as she told him the procedure had gone off without complications and that Jane would be returning to University to finish her degree.

“Thanks to you.”

“Hardly. She would have called Mac herself if I hadn’t been here.”

“But you were here, and she didn’t have to.”

“She wasn’t the first person I’ve had to do that for. I doubt she’ll be the last.”

It was the closest he had come to acknowledging the arrangement he shared with Dr MacMillan. Here, in the dark, wrapped in the arms of the woman he loved and trusted more than anyone else in the world, if felt safe to break that heavy silence.

He saw Phryne’s eyes widen, the whites glittering with tears in the moonlight.

“You truly are an extraordinary man, Jack Robinson, and we are very lucky to have you.”

* * *

“Does Jack know?” Mac asked, peering at Phryne over the top of her whisky.

“Of course, I couldn’t keep something like this from him.”

The doctor raised her eyebrows, her friend had kept similar complications from previous lovers Mac knew, although not as many as might be imagined given the breadth of her experience with men. Marie Stopes and her ingenious little device should have a statue erected to them – and probably would one day if Phryne had anything to do with it.

“Alright, I could have kept it from him, but I didn’t. Not from Jack.”

Mac mulled this statement over. It had always been blindingly obvious that Phryne felt differently about Jack than about the other men who’d graced her bed over the years. Still, it was an unprecedented and impressive level of honesty, given his job and the risks involved. She had reached her own arrangement with him when it came to women in trouble, including his own adopted daughter, but the man was no fool, and had always been excessively discreet. Neither of them wanted to face a jail sentence after all.

“And how did the Inspector take the news?”

“Surprised, mostly. He thought the shrapnel damage had made it impossible.”

“And you’re sure it’s his?”

“Of course. There hasn’t been anyone else, not since we made it official.”

She actually sounded offended at the idea, which was more amusing than surprising at this point, but having put up with her friends’ torturously slow courtship, Mac felt it was both her right and her duty to tease them about it as often as possible.

“Does that change things?”

“God, no! A baby isn’t something either of us want.”

Mac hadn’t actually expected a dramatic change of heart on that front. Neither of the detectives had shown any indication of wanting children together – other than Jane, of course - and whilst she could well imagine Phryne abseiling down a building with a babe in a sling, in practice it probably wasn’t a good idea. Still, it was always worth making sure.

“I thought it best to check. You probably won’t have many more chances, especially if Jack’s right and the shrapnel did cause damage in that area.”

“Thank goodness for that. It will make things so much simpler. Really Mac, we’re more than happy with just the two of us. Actually, it’s been rather nice to have Wardlow to ourselves now that Jane’s back at university – fewer interruptions.”

Mac chuckled in amusement, Phryne had looked down at her whisky with a tender little smile as she spoke and was actually blushing at the thought of her own domestic bliss. It was always entertaining to see her friend get soft and sentimental over Jack Robinson. There were very few men in the world worthy of such a compliment, but Mac was happy to put him at the top of the list.

“Speaking of Jack, I have something for him.”

She passed Phryne a small rectangular package containing a stack of calling cards, such as might be of use to a woman in need of a sympathetic doctor who wouldn’t leave her to bleed to death in an alleyway as payment for her troubles.

Phryne took one for herself, passing it to Mac so she could jot down a time and date for her appointment the following week. The rest were stashed in her handbag to replenish the stock in Jack’s desk, for which he had several perfectly plausible explanations, all of which fell short of the truth.

Their business concluded; the two women turned their attention to other more interesting matters.

No remorse, no regrets and nothing more to be said.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone mentioned that discrete = separate and discreet = covert/subtle.
> 
> I considered changing the title but decided I rather liked the word play which fits with the 5+1 and Jack and Mac's discrete spheres of influence, never breached by open communication about their conspiracy.
> 
> What can I say I'm weak for puns 😂


End file.
